


all we do

by sanctuarys



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, spoilers for FFH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 10:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19743745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuarys/pseuds/sanctuarys
Summary: spoilers for far from home!Peter dreams of dying again. He’s almost become used to the red and orange hues of the sky on Titan, the dusty air, the suffocating dirt and brown rocks and blinding pain in his ribcage, his head, everything. Every time he remembers it, it’s like the world is burning.





	all we do

**Author's Note:**

> warning: spoilers for far from home!

Peter’s not the same after Europe.

May is at the airport arrival hall when he comes back, looking strained and tired, but she lights up when she sees him anyway. She reaches out for him and he flinches, ducks away from her just a tiny bit. Prays she doesn’t notice, even though she will. He tentatively touches her arm and suddenly he’s gripping it, holding on for dear life, because there’s solid flesh instead of the thin air he almost expects, until she has to gently pry his fingers off her.

“Peter?”

He can’t quite meet her eyes, makes some strangled noise in his throat. She looks so, so sad.

“Come on.” She takes his luggage and guides him towards the elevators. “Let’s go home.”

-

He’s leaning his head against the car window, watching the streetlights flash by. One time May makes a too-sudden turn and he grips the door handle until his knuckles are blinding white. She’s frantically apologizing and he’s shaking his head, a semblance of a smile on his face, reassuring her that he’s fine.

“May, I had to ride in a jet with Happy at the wheel,” he reminds her. “I’ve been through worse.”

That, at least, gets a small laugh. He clings on to the sound, winces when he imagines it echoing. Tries to concentrate on her flustered insistence that Happy can’t be that bad, glosses over how she sounds flatter than usual, anxiety masked by thin humour.

“Why don’t you sleep?” She asks. Her eyes are pinned to the road, but it’s not like he doesn’t notice her gaze flicking over to him when she thinks he’s not looking. They’re both pretending today. “Jet lag must be something terrible.”

“’S not that bad.” He doesn’t want to shut his eyes, doesn’t want to see that endless void, doesn’t want to see that train tunnel, feel the phantom pain in his ribs. His grip on the handle tightens even further. Waits for it to dissolve until it doesn’t. His fingers hurt and can’t uncurl.

May doesn’t press the issue. They’re both a little too drained, a little too worn. There was a time when he would have had to bite back an instinctive question about Tony, when May would’ve talked the entire way home, frantic and angry and upset. There was another time Peter would’ve turned on the radio to their favourite station and they would’ve sung off-key, Peter dancing in his seat all the way home. Now, they sit in silence and listen to Google Maps pleasantly announce instructions.

“Nice of Tony to leave you his glasses,” May tries, gently. He notices her knuckles are white on the steering wheel, too. There’s a pang of guilt that’s become all too familiar. She makes another turn, slightly stiff.

His other hand comes up to touch the glasses perched on his nose. He hasn’t taken them off since he jammed them desperately onto his face and yelled for Edith, smudged with blood and tears and afraid that the world was going to collapse under him again if he didn’t do something in time.

“Yeah.” He watches Edith highlight the road signs as they pass them, sees her pull up a small screen in the corner with the fastest route home. Leans forward and makes a few taps to May’s phone so Edith's path is loaded up instead. “Real nice of him.”

May nods like she understands, glancing at the new directions. They don’t talk after that.

-

Peter dreams of dying again. He’s almost become used to the red and orange hues of the sky on Titan, the dusty air, the suffocating dirt and brown rocks and blinding pain in his ribcage, his head, everything. Every time he remembers it, it’s like the world is burning.

“Mr. Stark,” he calls, like he always does, stumbling forward, panic welling up in his throat even as he keeps telling himself it’s just a dream, “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good-“

His vision is a blur and he can barely stand up straight. His arm reaches forward, frantically clutching at air, reaching for something, anything. Sees the glint of red-gold armour caked with dust and blood and grabs, crying, his legs don’t feel solid anymore. Mr. Stark catches him like he always, says something he can’t hear-

And suddenly he’s falling, falling, screaming and clutching at nothing again. Tony is gone, the ground beneath him is gone, and all he knows is he’s tumbling through nothingness and his head feels like it’s about to split open. He can barely open his eyes from the pain, limbs flailing, _please let me catch something, one thing, anything-_

His body still aches, screams like there’s something fundamentally tearing itself apart within. He’s losing his mind, because all he’s ever dreamt about with that blinding pain in his body is the Blip, but the ground has never fallen from under him and Mr. Stark has never let him fall alone and he doesn’t understand what’s happening, surely he should be awake by now-

He opens his eyes against the agony and sees train tracks flashing by, shredding his suit and flesh, caught underneath his new worst nightmare. He claws his way back up the side like he did back in Europe, shaking and shivering and trying not to throw up. He knows he’s dreaming. He has to be. Has to be.

Red-gold armour glints again and he grabs it out of pure, terrified instinct, honed sharp after countless nights remembering Titan in terrifying detail. Agony, dust, grab onto Tony’s arm. It’s almost routine. Except this time, the Iron Man armour turns on him, broken faceplate and rotting corpse underneath, and he’s screaming and falling through the void again-

“Peter!” he hears, and he bolts awake with a yell, scrambling to hold on to his blanket, pillow, grab a webshooter, anything. Sees May with wide, scared eyes and forgets for a moment that he’s not in Beck’s simulation anymore, refuses to lean into her embrace until she doesn’t disappear. He’s shaking and crying all over again but she just holds him until he’s sure his ribs are intact, not broken from either the Blip or the train, and passes him a cup of water.

“Sorry,” he hears himself say.

“We’re here, Pete,” she tells him, pulling back to meet his gaze, still holding firmly onto his shoulders. He sips the water, forces himself to look at her. She is still tired, and worried, and strained, but there is a steely resolve that reminds him May Parker would not be here if she couldn’t handle whatever life threw at her.

He nods. “We’re here.”

-

He doesn’t stop trying to make sure for the first few weeks. He quizzes Ned on Star Wars trivia every time they meet, asks Happy about May, lets MJ delve into rants and random things she’s recently discovered. He thinks he’s getting away with it until MJ stops in the middle of a bullet point about the unfairly crippling nature of college debt and gives him a hard look.

“What?”

She narrows her eyes even further. “Don’t give me that. I know what you’ve been doing.”

He tries to look confused, hopes she doesn’t see his finger give a little tap against the table. He attempts to come up with a coherent sentence to defend himself, but all he manages is a very unconvincing, “What?”

MJ sighs. Her eyes soften. “We’re here. We’re not going anywhere.”

Something catches in his throat. He reaches for her hand across the table. “I know.”

“No, you don’t.” She’s frank as always, selecting a fry from the pile between them with her free hand. “But we try as hard as we can.”

What if it’s not enough? He thinks. Absent-mindedly pushes his – Tony’s – glasses back up where they’ve slid down his nose. Thinks back to when he watched her fall into nothingness, remembers his own terror, jumping into freefall after her. Sees her face on the Tower Bridge, streaked with grime and dust and tears, her arms clutching him in a hug, solid and real and present. _She’s here_ , he reminds himself. _We’re here_.

MJ’s still considering him with something he can’t quite place. The sun is setting, rays coming through the window of the diner, and the orange glow across her face almost reminds him of Titan, but not quite. Titan was ash and death and destruction, fire and smouldering ruins. Here, at this table, in this diner, on the busy streets of his city, MJ glows gold.

He says slowly, “And that’s all we can do, huh?”

She rubs the back of his hand with her thumb. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” he echoes back.

The black dahlia hanging from MJ’s neck swings as she leans forward to nab another fry, its broken petals glinting in the sunset. She catches him looking, runs her thumb over his hand again, and smiles.


End file.
